Leitrim hiking guide - ‘Wash the mud off your boots — and the mud off your soul’

There is no rushing Paul Rooney down a mountain. “Irish born, Leitrim bred — but reared in nature” as he describes himself.

There might be a summit somewhere ahead, but getting there is almost beside the point.

He will stop for the skylarks. He’ll point out the heather, tell you what is swimming in the lake below, show you where a spring comes straight out of the mountain and explain who walked this ground before you.

For the Leitrim man behind Muddy Souls Adventures Wellbeing Escapes in Nature, the mountain is not something to conquer.

It is somewhere to come back to yourself.

“What is the rush down?” he asks. “I’m not a company that’s running to the summit. I’m there to give the experience, to make people safe and to make them change their whole mentality around in life.”

His message is considerably simpler.

“Leave the hamster wheel and come up and just experience it for half an hour, because I’ll addict you to it.”

It is difficult to spend any length of time with Rooney without being swept up in his enthusiasm for the outdoors.

The 36-year-old grew up around Lough Melvin, where his father first introduced him to the natural world through days spent outdoors with the dogs. Fishing became another obsession after his father asked family friend Gene Hearn to take the young Paul onto the lake.

“He brought me out and I just got hooked on it,” Paul says. Among the fish they caught were Sonaghan trout, a species synonymous with Lough Melvin and something Paul believes Leitrim has never properly appreciated as a tourism asset.

“There are a lot of people in Leitrim that don't even know that. People come from all over the world to fish these in sport competitions.” As he got older, his curiosity moved further into the mountains.

Around 15 years ago, he began hiking seriously and noticed something very different from the crowded trails and Instagram summit photographs familiar today. “There was no social media and there were no young people when I really started out hiking.

“There were just hill walkers. They might be a husband and wife or two men out for a stroll. There was none of this group events or social media, get the picture at the top.” Many of the walkers he met were in their 50s, 60s and 70s. “They were always saying to me, ‘What are you doing up here, young fella?’”

He travelled across Ireland, climbing mountains and becoming increasingly fascinated not simply by the landscape, but by the stories written into it.

“I tried to go up every mountain and see what different landscape there was and what history there was on each mountain and why the walls were built this way and why life was different in different areas.”

Friends eventually began joining him. Their reaction planted the seed for what would become Muddy Souls Adventures.

“They were like, ‘Holy God, Paul, how do you know this stuff? You’re emotional, you're excited and you're so passionate.’

“They kept niggling at me, going, ‘Share this with the world. People need to hear this.’”

Even recounting it now makes him emotional. “I’m learning every single minute, every single hour and every single day. How could I not love that and share it with the world?

“I never know it all. That's why I love it.”

Finding a name for the fledgling business proved considerably harder. Paul initially considered the rather more conventional PR Adventures until a friend told him he needed something with more life in it.

He spent days, possibly weeks, thinking. Then he looked at his muddy hiking boots.

“Wash the mud off your boots when you go home in the evening. Wash the mud off the soul in your chest in the mountains with us.

“Muddy Souls Adventures. It can't be any better than that in my eyes.”

Even the logo tells a story. Its apostrophe is represented by a mayfly — another nod to Paul’s childhood around Lough Melvin.

“The mayfly only lives for 24 to 48 hours. That's its lifespan. And that's how I live my life 365 days a year.” That intensity runs through almost everything Paul says.